Radio On!
Media Apps for Android Tablets, Part IV
Before we move into the future of radio, let’s take a moment to salute its past. If you just can’t get enough “Life with Father” or George Burns and Gracie Allen, you might want to download Old Time Radio Player, a free app that offers programming guaranteed to pick you up and carry you right back to the 1930s.
A company called Wizzard Media sells apps that are collections of programs—“Great Detectives of Old Time Radio,” “Fibber McGee and Molly,” and the original “Dragnet” for $1.99 each. Many of these programs are on the Old Time Radio Player, so we suggest you that check before you pay. We might also mention a free app called LBS Radio, offering nothing but recordings from the heyday of the Liberty Broadcasting System, which roughly coincides with the era of Fibber McGee.
Now if you can find a big, wooden, floor model Android tablet, you’re in business. Honestly—you can search up and down Shoutcast and Icecast until you’re blue in the face, and you won’t find radio content as entertaining, engaging, and well-executed. Listen to enough radio from the ’30s and after a while you’ll begin to wonder why they invented television. If only someone would put out a Bob and Ray app!
Into the Great Unknown
We swear, we’ll shoot the next outfit that coins another pwecious widdle word like tweeting… or like scrobbling, Last.fm’s description of the process at the heart of their service. By way of your scrobbles, Last.fm learns what you’ve listened to in order to recommend music you might like. The company has assembled a huge database of listening habits—50 billion scrobbles—as well as a large audience of scrobblers. This caught CBS’s trademarked eye and compelled them to pay $240 million for Last.fm a few years back. Committed scrobblophiliacs can scrobble from their desktops, laptops, Xboxes, and (now) from their Android tablets. The app is free, as is the service.
Last.fm is only one of several companies pushing the definition of radio (and the valuation of Web businesses) in new directions. Another is Rdio, founded last year by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the people who brought us Skype, and Kazaa before that. Like Last.fm, Rdio is equal parts social network and radio. Rdio allows subscribers to choose from a large and growing repository of music and to communicate their likes and dislikes with one another. There are several subscription plans, but prepare to pay about $10 per month if you want to use your Android tablet or smartphone.
Up and coming in this category is Spotify, a European service that hasn’t quite reached American shores yet, but is bound to eventually. Like Rdio, Spotify lets users access music from a large database (13 million tracks), create playlists, and share the songs and lists. There are several tiers to the Spotify service, including free, but users pay for the privilege of not being advertised to. There’s an Android app, not that it matters until Spotify crosses the border.
So, have you heard about the little boy who was told that a thermos keeps cold things cold and hot things hot? He thought for a moment and then asked, “How do it know?” That’s the question for Pandora, whose tagline is “a new kind of radio—stations that play only music you like.” How do it know?
The answer is the Music Genome. According to Pandora, the Music Genome captures the “essence of music at the most fundamental level,” including melody, rhythm, instrumentation, arrangement, lyrics, vocals, et cetera. Tell Pandora that you like the Decemberists, and in a twinkling you’ll be listening to a playlist that includes the Shins, Death Cab for Cutie, Radiohead… and an ad for Lowe’s.
Despite the ads, it’s hard to deny that Pandora is a pretty cool service, and it’s clear that this is the direction that radio is taking. The Pandora Android app is free, but register at Pandora.com first.
As we see it, the real drawback to Last.fm, Rdio, Pandora et al. is that they’re eliminating one of radio’s great charms—the quirky human. It’s the big trend in every branch of digital media: human intermediaries, such as editors and disk jockeys, are whisked away and hidden, like in the Matrix. Fortunately, the machines haven’t gotten to reviewers. Yet.
Well, even with machine-run Pandora at one end of the scale and a bunch of dead actors on Old Time Radio Player at the other, we’re still struck by how much life remains in this old medium. In the 1920s it must have seemed like magic to hear voices and music materializing out of thin air. It’s just as magical today to tap on a screen and join the vast global conversation. Technology is certainly part of the magic… but we think the fundamental appeal is the way radio reinforces the human bond, allowing us to gather together with fellow souls out there in the cold night, sharing stories and songs in a vital, awesome communion.
What are you waiting for? Tune in!
Filed under: GentryMedia •Apps4Tablets •
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